Body & Brain

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TIME LAG Zika infections among pregnant women (solid line and scale on left) in Colombia spiked in January (around week 4). About six months later, the country saw a drastic increase in the number of infants and fetuses with microcephaly (dotted line and scale on right).

CDC

NOT DEAD YET Cells on the brink of dying from a type of programmed suicide known as apoptosis (left, a cancer cell known as a HeLa cell) can come back to life through a process called anastasis (right) if conditions improve. DNA is shown in blue.

Ho Lam Tang

Branches called dendrites extending from a nerve cell (green) receive messages from other neurons at tiny protrusions called dendritic spines. A faulty protein in the spines may be related to a wide range of mental disorders.